Trump’s specific use of the word “shitholes” is a successful selective strategy used by him and other racist Americans in identifying countries, cultures and people that are predominantly populated by people of color – be it countries on his travel ban list or by refusing to allow immigrants from certain countries.

It’s easier to garner support in refusing immigration to a shithole than it is to a Haitian. By calling those countries shitholes, tens of millions of dumb Americans simply equate that if all these other countries are shitholes, the people coming from them must be shitholes too. Which leads them to question, “how are we going to make America Great Again be allowing these shitholes into America?” No one wants America to be a shithole nation after all. Not even David Duke…

“Just as the most ardent Trump supporters were about to give up on him in despair – he restores a lot of love in us by saying blunt but truthful things that no other President in our lifetime would dare say! No DACA! NO COMPROMISE – NO Sh**thole America! Hail Trump!” This was a tweet from David Duke the day after Trump’s shithole comments were made public.

The media again as failed in their discussions on whether Trump is a racist. That’s like having a discussion on whether water is wet or not. There are tens of millions of racists in America. Our president is an open racist and a first-class asshole. The founders of this country were for the most part racists as well. That’s not news. What is news and what should be discussed is Trump’s tactics in dehumanizing his enemies and foes.

It’s easy to hate those rapists (Mexicans) if Trump’s got your ear. He’s done the same thing with “Crooked Hillary” and that “Nut Job Comey” among many others. There are factions within Trump’s based that would gladly kill Hillary, Comey and every Mexican in this country today. Trump has been dehumanizing his enemies for most of his life.

Trump and I were both raised by fathers who were ideologically alike in their support and fanaticism with the right-wing extreme John Birch Society and the racist KKK. Donald was taught by his daddy (as was I) that it’s much easier to eliminate an opponent or enemy by reducing them to a less than human standard before engaging them in a battle – whether it’s in the media, a presidential debate or on the battlefield.

The immigration rhetoric (build the wall, ban Muslims, deport Hispanics, etc.) by Trump and the GOP is predicated on the impending shift towards a white minority in America and that is simply why they harbor so much hate, anger and resentment towards people of color. They believe this demographic shift is a conspiracy (a Democratic and Satanic conspiracy for many of them) to destroy the “Great White Christian Super Majority” and America as well. When Trump and tens of millions of other Americans say, “Make America Great Again,” what they truly mean is “Make America White Again.”

Unlike Trump, I was raised by a poor white, right-wing American who shares many of Trump’s ideological embarrassments. Dad taught me that black people, for the most part, were lazy, didn’t want to work and bought drugs with their welfare checks. “They hurt America,” I was taught. Good black people were called “African Americans” and the bad ones were “niggers,” he’d say. Mexicans were called “wetbacks” and none of them were welcome in this country because they took jobs away from real Americans (white people) by working for less. Dad was constantly trying to dehumanize our enemies and anyone who didn’t believe the things that we knew to be true. I grew up believing my dad was the smartest man in the world.

I used to believe that all homosexuals, atheists, immigrants, liberals and anything and anyone that wasn’t like us, were all out to destroy me. When I heard the words humanist, environmentalist, feminist, educated or equal and civil rights, I’d be irritated, suspicious and angry. Those were all code words for Communists, who of course weren’t humans like us.

My dad equated black people with Communists. He was so paranoid that he believed black people would take away his entitlements in this country. He hated black people because they wanted the same rights as us white men. According to him, their desires for equal rights made them pawns of the Communist Conspiracy. Same goes for women who wanted equal rights and believed that they were as equal as us. I believed for years that Martin Luther King Jr. was training black people to be Communists and Malcolm X and the Black Panthers were out to kill white people for sport. I grew up fantasizing about killing them. It was far easier to conceptualize killing a bunch of niggers than it was to go kill some black Americans. After all, I was taught that niggers weren’t worthy of being considered humans.

People who lived in other countries outside of America were not normal or civilized like us, he’d say. If they didn’t dress like Americans or act and do the things we did, then they weren’t exactly developed or advanced like us and ultimately, they weren’t as good as us. They were shitheads from a shithole country. People who weren’t American were subhuman. And because these other people were less human than me, it was easy to hate them and be completely unaffected by their deaths. This is a strategy that has been successful in dehumanizing our enemies, those we hate and those we kill. It can be a struggle to hate other Americans who share different viewpoints, but it’s easy for a lot of Americans to hate and want to go out and kill some libtards, pussies, snowflakes and shitholes.

“Shitholes” is just another dehumanizing word, this time created by a narrow-minded, fearful idiot to degrade and ultimately dehumanize another race. It’s easy to hate shitholes if they’re called shitholes and not fellow humans who happen to have been born on a different continent. Narrow-minded bigots, racists, sexists, warmongers and of course Trump, call other humans names to degrade and to dehumanize.

The same strategy exists in war. It’s easy to kill a gook, a towel head, a chink, a commie or a Kraut. It’s much harder to hate and kill people. For many right-wing extremists like Trump and my daddy, we’re at war. A war against the devil, brown people, liberals and Democrats to save America’s soul and to make it great again. Trump’s base believes this. Timothy McVie believed this as did I back when I was a good son who believed everything his daddy said.

Hollywood helped this dehumanizing strategy with the first real big zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead, which came out in 1968 and served as a metaphor for the impending communist invasion back then. The mantra kept repeating in my head: communists aren’t human. They’re zombies. That’s why it’s so easy to kill them. Zombies are commies… Let’s all kill zombies!

There is something seriously wrong in America when racists, paranoids and those full of hatred brainwash their children with their own narrow-minded beliefs. As ignorant extremists continue to breed, control the Oval Office, the Senate and the House – fear and hate will continue to thrive and more people will suffer and die at the hands of right-wing extremism. If you think Trump is simply a racist, that’s fake news and you’ve missed the point. Trump is a dehumanizer. After all, it’s far easier to go kill a brown subhuman shithole than it is to kill a Haitian or some guy who doesn’t look like me and lives in a straw hut.

How do you change the mind of a right-wing extremist in America today? How do you change the mind of a die hard Trump voter? You don’t. It’s a waste of your time and you have better things to do. We are not going to unite as a country any time soon after what has happened.

I was raised in the eighties to be a right-wing extremist like my father. I was sent to an extreme right-wing (John Birch Society) summer camp where I was brainwashed to be a heartless and paranoid conservative prick like my dad. I used to believe that homosexuals, atheists, immigrants, liberals and anyone who wasn’t white like us, were out to take away our rights as good, God-fearing Americans. When I heard the words humanist, environmentalist, feminist, educated and equal or civil rights, I’d get irritated, suspicious and angry.

I was taught that if someone challenged my statements or beliefs, they did so because they were scared or intimidated and were afraid of the cold hard truth. I was taught that liberals and democrats were brainwashed and trained to ignore the truths regarding what was really going on in America. Arguing with a liberal was a complete waste of time, my dad would say. They were too dumb, too brainwashed and there was no way that we could change their minds. Every time someone argued with me about anything, I felt contempt. I felt ridiculed. I felt like they were telling me I was stupid and wrong. I felt like they were telling me that my parents and everything that I knew to be true was a lie. Just having someone argue with me or having my point of view challenged made me angry – regardless of the facts presented. I was taught not to believe your facts.

If you are wondering how to deal with a member of America’s extreme right, forget it. It’s a waste of your time. In fact, the harder you try to convince a right-winger or a Trump voter that he’s destroying America, the more they’ll support him and argue and belittle you. As much as we all want every American to be mature, compassionate and to only believe in real facts, it’s not going to happen anytime soon. They think of us as their enemies. The GOP has been overthrown by the extreme right and they have zero interest in working together in actually keeping America great.

It’s taken me over three decades to reject the filth, paranoia and brainwashing that my dad, the extremist John Birch Society and the National Rifle Association emphasized. Both of my parents hate me for rejecting their nonsense. If I was more like them or Donald Trump, Timothy McVeigh, Ted Cruz, Ted Nugent or David Duke – they’d be happy. Since I was seventeen (I’m 48 today), I’ve worked hard to not be anything like my dad. I’ve countered much of the ideology and negativity that was ingrained in me, but it’s been a struggle overcoming the lack of reasonable and honest judgment that was omitted from my upbringing.

Had I stayed the course, been loyal to his ideals, there’s no question in my mind that I’d be dead or would have demonstrated a similar catastrophic terror like that of Timothy McVeigh, the “good son,” for example. If I hadn’t died, I would’ve had some significant role with the Tea Party crowd and the current wave of right-wing extremism eroding and taking over this country. Dad always warned me about the future of America and said that action was necessary to keep our country free. If I had continued living in his version of America, I might have blown up buildings, killed certain people or sought political office to make him proud and to save the Republic.

I first began writing my thoughts down in 2011 in a journal after getting extremely frustrated with both of my parents when visiting with them for family events. I was also freaked during the 2012 Presidential election when a few of the candidates where speaking nonsense and hate – things that I had heard when I was an impressionable teen. That 2012 election revealed a lot about America when extremism began making the gradual shift to mainstream and their cause gained a serious amount of traction.

Over time, it became obvious that I was writing a book about the role my parents (most specifically my dad) played during my childhood, intentionally or not, in corrupting my life by molding me to be just like them. I shudder to think of what sort of person I would be today had I not escaped the influence of my upbringing. I’ve always known that there was something wrong with my parents. Had I not come to understand this, I’d likely be dead, in prison or be a right-wing extremist politician.

“Hate or Be Hated: How I Survived Right-Wing Extremism,” is my story of being raised by a paranoid white-trash hillbilly in the woods of Western Washington preparing for the impending communist invasion or overthrow of our country. 100% of all book sale proceeds are going to the ACLU. It’s a book on how it took thirty years to undo the right-wing brainwashing I endured as a child. It’s my memoir that gives a glimpse into what kind of family produces Americans who are primed to believe fake news and put their trust into anyone who seems as angry as they are. This book is about my personal journey and the way these attitudes directly caused so much suffering in my own life as well as how they are still influencing the choices and decisions being made by a large percentage of people in this country today. It’s a story about my anger and embarrassment over who I was and how I was raised in an environment that didn’t value empathy, honesty and caring. I am angry and embarrassed that on some level, I still want my dad to be proud of me.

Only in the past few years have I been able to look back over the life I’ve lived so far and seriously examine my childhood. I’ve had to come to terms with the thoughts, decisions and actions that were a direct reflection of what my parents taught me as a young boy. This examination has been stressful, unsettling and has brought to the surface a lot of deep-seated anger which I’ve carried most of my life. I never understood it at all until recently. No child should experience the paranoia, despair and isolation that Dad instilled in me. No child should be taught by radical right-wing American extremists that the only options in this life are to “hate or be hated.”

The United States of America has undergone a major upheaval and most people are still struggling to understand what the hell happened. What’s happened is done. The Republicans won and we need to get over that and never quit fighting to save this country. The only issue left at hand is that all of us, the Democratic Party and all progressives and true lovers of freedom must get unified now or we’re going to be looking at more than just four years of this terrifying shit storm. We have to work together. All of us. Just like they did.

The John Birch Society nearly changed the face of America during the 1964 Republican presidential race with their abominable brand of anti-semantic, racist, sexist and anti-government rage. Over a half a century later, the Birchers are back and stronger than ever thanks to the efforts of the Koch Brothers, the Tea Party, the rise of Alt-Right and of course, the shocking nomination of Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for President.

“The extremists feed on fear, hate and terror,” warned Governor Nelson Rockefeller at the 1964 Republican National Convention. Rockefeller was booed along the same lines that Ted Cruz was at the 2016 Convention. “There is no place in this Republican Party for those who would infiltrate its ranks, distort its aims, and convert it into a cloak of apparent respectability for a dangerous extremism. And make no mistake about it – the hidden members of the John Birch Society and others like them are out to do just that!”

This was over fifty years ago when the John Birch Society and KKK unsuccessfully tried taking over the White House with a Goldwater nomination.

While the Birchers stayed out of the mainstream for decades, their anger and paranoia stayed intact as they focused on “educating” their youth so one day they could try again.

Since its inception in 1958, the radical and extreme John Birch Society has been brainwashing its members and followers to not trust anyone but them and their many off-shoot organizations. The John Birch Society is the inspiration and original extreme right-wing organization in America which brought us the Tea Party, the Alt-Right, the Sovereign Citizen Movement, the Minutemen and others.

In a nutshell, the John Birch Society is by far the most radical anti-communist and anti-government organization on the planet. It was created by a few wealthy extremists who wish to preserve their interpretation of America by putting the fear of totalitarian slavery and misery into the hearts and minds of many illogical and unhappy American fools.

The John Birch Society, despite their rhetoric, is not a pro-American organization. They’re not all Republicans. They’ll tell you that there are commies and traitors in both major political parties. They are a radical anti-government cult who embody and embrace fear and hate to maintain their false sense of patriotism. Birchers know that they are right about everything and attack anyone who states the opposite.

None of America’s right-wing heroes such as Donald Trump, Alex Jones, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, David Duke, Sarah Palin, the Koch Brothers or Steve Bannon admit to being members of the John Birch Society, but each one of them echo the same bigotry, racism, sexism and antisemitism I’ve experienced first-hand for most of my life. I know this all to be true because I grew up in the John Birch Society where I learned fear, paranoia and hate as a way of life.

Growing up in the ‘80s, Dad always said we’d be lucky to survive another year before something would destroy America. He’s been saying this every year for as long I can remember and still does to this day.

Dad is no longer a kook and crazy old man. He’s now a mainstream Republican in the party of hate.

He’s been a chapter leader in the John Birch Society for decades and subjected me to a childhood of extremism and right-wing brainwashing. He’s now among millions of Americans these days who have forgotten what it means to be free, to be decent, and to let other Americans, who aren’t like them, enjoy the same freedoms they relish.

In 1985, I received my formal “training” at a John Birch Society summer camp located at the YMCA Campgrounds in Lake Wenatchee, WA. I would be one among hundreds of teenagers sent to your not-so-average summer camp to learn the secrets of the Grand Communist Conspiracy.

The week-long John Birch Society summer camp featured daily lectures about how rock and roll was going to make me love Satan, how the United Nations was created to take away our freedoms and ultimately destroy America with the “New World Order,” how the liberal media lies to us, how our high school teachers try to brainwash us and why civil rights is a lie, among plenty of other fringe topics. I was taught that Democrats, liberals, bankers, the government, celebrities and the media were all working together with the Illuminati to trick us into becoming communist slaves. Most importantly, however, I was taught that the John Birch Society was the only organization which could save America from the communist threat and preserve our freedoms. I was taught they were our only hope to make America great again. I didn’t believe everything I was told, but a lot of it I did.

If the John Birch Society said there were five hundred million Chinese soldiers hiding near the US/Mexico border getting ready to invade us, Dad would believe it and would be warning you about it, without any proof or evidence. If you didn’t believe him, he’d think you were an idiot.

The John Birch Society believes that the Illuminati are the forefathers of communism and that they work hand in hand with Satan in a conspiracy to eliminate America.

Birchers warn that we have little time left and if we don’t act soon to save America, all will be lost. They’ve been saying this with great panic and fear for over half a century now.

The leadership in the John Birch Society does this with constant brainwashing of their followers. They do this with scare tactics and a conspiracy philosophy that preaches to anyone who will listen to them that America will surely perish if you don’t join them in the fight now. They want you to invest in them with your money and time. They’ll “educate” you on whom to vote for and they’ll tell you to get your friends and family to do the same.

The John Birch Society is very much like a cult, except that it boasts a private and secret membership. They’re an organization with cells set up in each and every state. They have regular meetings in living rooms and town halls all over the country. They are now extremely active on the internet with social media and email alerts. They encourage home-schooling and provide their own curriculum so children can avoid the indoctrination of communism in public schools.

Birchers assert that the U.S. government is controlled by a group of Satan-loving internationalists, bankers, Jews and corrupt politicians who seek a “one-world socialist government.” They believe that this will come about, gradually, through the decline of Western Civilization, but mostly, they believe that secret traitors in the United States will tear up the Constitution and, one day soon, hand over our sovereignty to the United Nations. They believe that the United Nations was created for one reason and that was to eliminate the United States of America.

It was only a matter of time, Dad would constantly warn me, until America would cease to exist. The Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution would just be pieces of failed history. We’d all be slaves in a socialistic or Marxist state, or even worse, full-blown commies.

The Communist Manifesto would be our new bible and the United Nations’ Declaration of Interdependence would be our new constitution. Religion and gun ownership would be illegal. Freedom of speech wouldn’t exist. There would be no countries, no borders and no America.

To think that the UN only exists to enable the overthrow of America is ludicrous, foolish and, sadly, a very real story for millions of paranoid Americans including 2016 Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz. “What President Obama wants to do is, he’s run to the United Nations and wants to use the United Nations to bind the United States and take away our sovereignty.”

The John Birch Society said the same thing about President Kennedy just before he was assassinated in 1963.

The John Birch Society uses the illusion that we are all oppressed victims of evil (taxes, regulations, equality, immigration, foreign aid and gun control) and that our own government is out to control all aspects of our lives. Birchers see all of this as good versus evil, us versus them, right versus wrong, white versus black, freedom versus slavery, and ultimately, God versus the Devil.

I was taught that we were being persecuted for believing in the Constitution and for loving Jesus. Yet we had God and the Constitution on our side, and if we worked hard enough we would ultimately prevail in keeping America free. God loves America and our Constitution more than anything I was taught.

Birchers believe that the Civil Rights Movement and the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. and others existed only to spread communism throughout America. They said the same thing about the ERA, the EPA and gay rights amongst many others. Welch even stated that President Eisenhower was a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist Conspiracy.

Like 2016 Republican Presidential candidate Rand Paul, Birchers would like to eliminate the Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy and Housing along with Homeland Security, the IRS and the EPA among other agencies. “The greatest enemy of man is and always has been government. And the larger, the more extensive that government, the greater the enemy,” said Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society.

Birchers are no different than the young men being suckered in to join gangs. They feel helpless, lonely and angry. My dad fit this profile and sadly, even though he’s been a member for over forty years now, he stills feels helpless, lonely and angry. Yet, once anyone is accepted among others of similar negative projections, they immediately feel justification in an almost sociopathic narcissistic way. This is why people clap at Trump rallies.

The wealthy men who helped Welch create the John Birch Society also included an exceptionally rich man named Fred Koch. He is the father of the two sons who currently run Koch Industries and are involved in numerous extreme right-wing causes in America.Like Welch, Koch was severely extreme in his fear mongering. “Maybe you don’t want to be controversial by getting mixed up in this anti-communist battle,” Koch said in a speech to a Women’s Republican Club in 1961. “But you won’t be very controversial lying in a ditch with a bullet in your brain.”

William F. Buckley, largely known as the godfather to America’s conservative movement for the past half century, has said the John Birch Society was “so far removed from common sense,” and dismissed the Society as dangerous to our Republic. He was so offended by Robert Welch and his John Birch Society that he ran a six-page editorial attacking them in his National Review in 1962, even though he knew it would alienate a lot of his readers and Birch members (including his own mother).

The FBI and J. Edgar Hoover described the Birch Society as “extremist,” “irrational,” “irresponsible,” “fanatic,” and “lunatic fringe.”

Prior to the 2008 presidential election, right-wing extremists and racists like my father
and Donald Trump were still in the closet for the most part. That presidential election revealed a lot about America when extremism began making the gradual shift to mainstream and their cause gained a serious amount of traction. The extreme right was still kooky and a minority-fringe of the Republican Party until a black man became president.

The strength that the Ron Paul movement gained along with the support he received from the KKK, the John Birch Society, the Tea Party, militia groups and others signaled that our country was very much in trouble and a new civil war was brewing. People were told that they should be angry because they were getting screwed by the government and of course they all believe this.

“From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party. His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous,” said Hillary Clinton in a speech in August, 2016 sounding very much like a certain Republican from 1964.

Birchers adored Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, Barry Goldwater, Ron Paul and now they’re embracing and loving Donald Trump’s enormous ego, his raging entitlement issues and the fact that he’s a greedy white man filled with hate. The Birch Society has found one of their own in Donald Trump.

JG Daniel is the author of “Hate or Be Hated: How I Survived Right-Wing Extremism.”

Search

Search for:

Text Widget

Search

Search for:

Text Widget

This is a text widget, which allows you to add text or HTML to your sidebar. You can use them to display text, links, images, HTML, or a combination of these. Edit them in the Widget section of the Customizer.